The 18 Mistakes That Kill Startups
October 2006 In the Q & A period after a recent talk, someone asked what made startups fail. After standing there gaping for a few seconds I realized this was kind of a trick question. It's equivalent to asking how to make a startup succeed—if you avoid every cause of failure, you succeed—and that's too big a question to answer on the fly. Afterwards I realized it could be helpful to look at the problem from this direction. In a sense there's just one mistake that kills startups: not making something users want. 1. Have you ever noticed how few successful startups were founded by just one person? What's wrong with having one founder? But even if the founder's friends were all wrong and the company is a good bet, he's still at a disadvantage. The last one might be the most important. 2. Startups prosper in some places and not others. Why is the falloff so sharp? 3. If you watch little kids playing sports, you notice that below a certain age they're afraid of the ball. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9.
Funding Invention Vs. Managing Innovation
Breaking Human Resource News: PREVISOR ACQUIRES BRAINBENCH Acqui
Atlanta, GA (May 31, 2006) PreVisor, a leader in workforce selection and performance, today announced that it has acquired Brainbench, Inc., an innovator in employment testing and skills certification. The acquisition strengthens PreVisors position as the leading online provider of job-specific, pre-employment assessments by adding Brainbench's world-renowned IT skills testing content to its library, expanding its market penetration, and increasing its strong foothold in the government sector with accounts such as the Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Department of State. The acquisition of Brainbench is the second transaction within the past year for PreVisor, the first being its formation in August 2005 through the combination of Qwiz, ePredix, and PDRI. "We are very pleased to become part of the PreVisor family of companies, says Mike Russiello, president, CEO and co-founder of Brainbench, based in Chantilly, Virginia.
Why Startups Condense in America
May 2006 (This essay is derived from a keynote at Xtech.) Startups happen in clusters. There are a lot of them in Silicon Valley and Boston, and few in Chicago or Miami. A country that wants startups will probably also have to reproduce whatever makes these clusters form. I've claimed that the recipe is a great university near a town smart people like. It is by no means a lost cause to try to create a silicon valley in another country. 1. For example, I doubt it would be possible to reproduce Silicon Valley in Japan, because one of Silicon Valley's most distinctive features is immigration. A silicon valley has to be a mecca for the smart and the ambitious, and you can't have a mecca if you don't let people into it. Of course, it's not saying much that America is more open to immigration than Japan. 2. I could see India one day producing a rival to Silicon Valley. In poor countries, things we take for granted are missing. The US has never been so poor as some countries are now. 3. 4. 5. 6.
OpenBusiness
How to Start a Startup
March 2005 (This essay is derived from a talk at the Harvard Computer Society.) You need three things to create a successful startup: to start with good people, to make something customers actually want, and to spend as little money as possible. Most startups that fail do it because they fail at one of these. A startup that does all three will probably succeed. And that's kind of exciting, when you think about it, because all three are doable. If there is one message I'd like to get across about startups, that's it. The Idea In particular, you don't need a brilliant idea to start a startup around. Google's plan, for example, was simply to create a search site that didn't suck. There are plenty of other areas that are just as backward as search was before Google. For example, dating sites currently suck far worse than search did before Google. An idea for a startup, however, is only a beginning. What matters is not ideas, but the people who have them. People What do I mean by good people?
&8220;Unmanned hotels&8221; to lose fro
26 Oct 2006 A new project to develop "unmanned hotels" in Japan may soon eliminate the burdensome task of checking in at the front desk. A consortium of five companies, including the trading company Itochu and consumer credit provider Orico, are working to develop a network of hotels that rely on an online reservation and payment system, RFID-enabled Orico credit cards that serve as keys, and RFID-enabled door entry locks. When hotel guests reserve a room online with their RFID-enabled credit card, a "key" is assigned to the card. Other companies involved in the project are Kesaka System, who are developing the entry locks, as well as Espace Construction and Miyabi Estex, who are handling construction and development. Japanese law requires hotels to maintain staffed front desks, so the unmanned hotels will not be completely staff-free. A dozen or so of these hotels are scheduled to begin operations nationwide in 2008. [Source: Nikkei Net]
Berkun blog & Blog Archive & The start-
One common pattern I’ve seen with small tech companies is how their initial success by focusing on self-driven engineering talent creates problems they are completely unequipped to solve. I call this the start-up management inflection point. The premise: Small engineering start-up is born, does well, hires like mad.Heavy hiring bias for self-driven solo programmer prodigies.Company grows; scores of engineers are productive, but conflicts and miscommunications rise.Soon primary challenge isn’t quality programmers: it’s organizing them. No matter how self-directed programmers are, eventually their utility declines as ambiguities in direction, conflicts in direction and ownership increase. When a certain size is reached, likely 100 to 200, the company changes because of scale effects. The trap: Dozens of tech-sector companies are stuck in this trap and have been for years. So what’s the solution? The answers come fast if everyone has shared goals. Good questions include: What are the symptoms?
